


A Still More Glorious Dawn

by Eterya



Category: Real life - Fandom
Genre: Beautiful, No Plot/Plotless, Philosophy, Reader-Insert, References to Carl Sagan, Science Fiction, space colonies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 21:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17588330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eterya/pseuds/Eterya
Summary: ...awaits.Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise.A morning filled with 400 billion sunsThe rising of the Milky Way.- Carl SaganI got really inspired after reading this quote, so I just couldn't help writing something.





	A Still More Glorious Dawn

You awake to the nigh complete darkness of your room at what feels like way too early in the morning. Turning on your side, you rub your eyes and blink a few times until you can decipher the display of your bedside clock. _20:72_ ...That's minus 3:03, divide by... Still half asleep you take a moment to math out that it's something like the equivalent of 2:10 AM Earth time.

Slowly fully waking up, you pause for a moment, holding your breath as you listen if maybe there was some distant alarm or malfunction that woke you, but the low vibrations of the air-con, the occasional click and whir of the antenna, and even the faint hum of the shield generator outside all sound perfectly normal, leaving the station in a pre-dawn silence. ...Seriously, why are you awake? 

But toss and turn as you might, trying to fall asleep, it looks like you're awake for good. Oh, well. With a small sigh you roll over and get out of your bed, the bit of light falling through your window as you open the curtains enough for to silently get dressed in your practical yet comfortable standard-issue attire. Still better things to do than just lay around and be bored while you wait another two hours for the first people to wake up, so you decide to just go for a bit of a walk, then maybe even get some work done early. 

Quietly leaving your room, and making your way through the housing section, you leave the station, taking a deep breath as you step into the cool outside air. 'Outside' being relative of course, the couple million cubic metres around you being in fact all air there is on the planet, carefully kept inside the protective dome surrounding your station. Yet despite all the cycling and filtering you could swear that the air still feels, tastes, a little different than inside the station. 

Even if was designed to be as translucent and unobtrusive as possible, right now in the pre-dawn darkness the faint glow of the honeycomb-looking environmental barrier spanning above you still gives you enough light as you leisurely walk to one of the nearby flowerbeds, enjoying the feel of the thick, short sturdy grass under your bare feet, your step slightly bouncy from the lower-than-Earth gravity, even if by now you've mostly gotten used to it.

There's also some fields of proper crops, but this one was started by one of the botanists just because 'it'd be pretty', and right now you find you have to agree; even if not all the seeds you brought with you actually managed to bloom, but the ones that did have proven quite hardy, in particular, there's a few tall, white ones, some kind of lilly if you remember correctly, that are really beautiful, almost seeming to glow under the dim light of the barrier.

Just slowly wandering with no particular goal, you pass one of the trees you planted, a willow or so, that seems to have taken to the rapid growth treatments quite well, brushing a hand over its greyish-brown, fissured bark; just a few more years and it's gonna be tall enough to sit under and enjoy the shade while reading a book. And depending on how the branches turn out, perhaps you can get the engineers to build a swing, or even a treehouse, after all being a bit childish just from time to time never hurt anyone.

Continuing on your way, you ultimately come to a stop in front of one of the airlocks to the actual outside. ...Might as well. The RFID in your arm automatically creates a log and sets an alarm if you don't return in time as you put on an exo-suit and oxygen canister, sealing your helmet and double-checking everything before activating the airlock, and with a dull hiss the chamber evacuates before the other door opens, and you  _really_ step outside.

Even though it's far from the first time seeing it, the sheer number of stars in the night sky above you never fail to impress you; countless larger and small specks of light in a vast sea of black. None of the constellations you knew growing up are visible from this completely different perspective – even though some of the crew have taken to spotting, and naming, new ones –, nor is Earth, and you're not sure even the sun is, not that you could tell which one of the small glowing sparks was 'yours' from here anyways.

The dark blue sand, appearing all but black in the low light, shifts and crunches under you feet as you make your way towards a nearby hill to completely leave the light of the barrier around your station, yet when you climb it, looking over the plains below the plateau you're on, something in the sky makes you pause. 

Just above the horizon there's what looks like part of a white, faintly blue nebula, slowly coming into view; something about the shape feels familiar, so you wait just behind the crest of the hill, observing the nebula slowly rise over the horizon, the left side tapering out and fading while the right side becomes brighter and denser, curving inwards, followed by another yet brighter strand after a while, spiralling inwards as well, before it finally hits you. 

It's not a nebula or something at all, it's a galaxy. ...Your galaxy. The Milky Way.

You're probably making a pretty dumbstruck face as the realisation fully sets in, but you don't particularly care. Yeah, you knew that the planet you were being stationed on was pretty far away – even with the fastest, most modern FTL drive you spent almost a decade in cryostasis before you arrived – and 'above' the Milky Way, but you ever expected ...this.

By now the Milky Way is visible in full, with the bright bar in the middle and its two arms spiralling around it. Earth, the Solar System, and even beyond that... It's not just one Pale Blue Dot anymore, but, even now, the cradle of humanity, and all its endeavours, efforts and achievements, the billions and billions of people, all of it, in this one galaxy. Yet from here it looks so small, like it would fit in the palm of your hand if you just stretched out your arm.

'Astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience', as a great man once put it, and right now you have to agree. Look from far enough away and everything becomes small and insignificant. But at the same time it's not like that actually matters. It's not about what meaning or influence your life, or humanity's as a whole, has, it's about what you do with it, right?

Right.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is a thing now, inspiration works in funny ways sometimes. I wonder how many people are actually gonna find/read this. (Is Real Life even a fandom as such?) I put some thought into making sense of the planet/station you're stationed on (including the time of day; days there are 25% longer and they set 0:00 as morning rather than midnight), but ultimately that stuff will just have to fall under artistic license. I didn't have a beta reader for this one, so excuse any typos/errors I missed, I'll fix any if I catch them. I guess I could go into how the universe and science and understanding the universe through science is awesome and beautiful here, but I'll leave that to other, greater, people.
> 
> Anyone who never heard of Carl Sagan, you owe it to yourself to look him up and read/listen to some of his stuff, say, his Pale Blue Dot speech (or Symphony of Science on Youtube, which features numerous quotes from him).
> 
> Also, as always, thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed, any constructive feedback/criticism is greatly appreciated.


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